I’m cleaning house for an impending mother-in-law visit, and I’m finding I’m a little…scattered. For example, on Tuesday I spent over an hour tidying a bookshelf that is invisible to anyone not sitting at my computer in our back room. Meanwhile, the dining room table in the middle of our kitchen can’t be moved to the exciting new dining room until I remove its cloak of detritus—and yet there it sits, still cloaked.

Yesterday’s urgent cleaning task was a box marked Memory down in the basement storage. CLEARLY that box needs to be sorted out RIGHT NOW; it will make ALL the difference in the overall cleanliness of the house! I’m tossing out my old diaries, the ones from my teenage years. I’ve saved them for two decades on average, and I’m still not interested in reading them. Furthermore, when I DO read a little bit of one, it’s excruciating. Not ha-ha excruciating, just excruciating. I went through and pulled out the photos (my family’s living room in 1986! the boy I had a crush on for four years!), but the rest of this crap is getting pitched.

You may wonder if I am not being a bit hasty here. Perhaps in my crazed-bumblebee cleaning frenzy I am making rash decisions. But no: I’ve been thinking for a few years that it’s time to stop saving the diaries, and I waited this long only because I wanted to avoid being hasty and rash but couldn’t bear the necessary task of going through them first.

I’d thought, back when I was writing these drippy, emotional, overly self-aware tributes to self-absorption, that as an adult I’d want to go back and read admiringly about my younger self, but in fact I would pay CASH MONEY not to have to. It’s not JUST that I was so lame, it’s that I was so very sure of my non-lameness. This is the sort of thing that causes a person to wonder squirmingly how she’ll feel in twenty years about her 30s.

Oh, hey, here’s what I was looking for in a husband at age 15:

1. nice eyes that show inside emotion
2. a very sensitive sense of humor but can be serious
3. never (or at least rarely) late
4. likes to take walks
5. likes to hold hands
6. likes to shop
7. NOT a male chauvinist
8. sends me flowers and balloons and stuff
9. doesn’t like football or baseball
10. generally cheerful
11. good hygiene
12. strong but not too macho

Here’s the timeline of my first romantic relationship:

• August 12 – asked me out
• August 14 – called me long-distance
• August 20 – visited with his parents
• August 27 – took me to see Abyss and for frozen yogurt and a walk with his parents
• September 22 – broke up with me

You know what’s missing between August 27 and September 22? The part where I wrote him a multi-page letter Every! Single! Day! and it was filled to the brim with love love love. Freaking him the SNERHELL out, since we were FIFTEEN YEARS OLD.

One highlight from a college journal: “I am a difficult, irritable, cranky, critical, complainy person. How can I change this?” GOOD LUCK WITH THAT, college girl!

Here is a list:

FRIMPING
VEERING
IRRELEVANCY BUS

It’s all in caps like that. What does it…mean?

Here’s a poem that is better than all my other high school and college poetry by merit of being SHORTER:

so you say
you love me.

well.

Here is my high school prom budget:

$100 prom dress
$10 chewing gum for crash diet
$15 haircut
$40 dyed-to-match shoes
$5 silver ankle bracelet
$4 two pairs of nylons
$4 nail polish

Please note that this was for an IMAGINARY prom: I had a crush on a junior boy I’d never even talked to, and was imagining how much money I’d need if he invited me to his prom. Which he did not do, and that was unsurprising because we’d NEVER MET.

Basic composition of high school journals:

50% boys boys boys boys OMG boys!
25% lame, self-conscious sarcasm
20% song lyrics
5% French

Basic composition of college journals:

40% boys boys boys boys OMG boys!
25% lame, self-conscious sarcasm
25% lame introspection
10% song lyrics

Clearly this is not information to preserve for the ages, and I am speaking from the point of view of someone who has just paged wincingly through hundreds and hundreds of pages of “I LOVE JIMMY!!!! He is SOOOOOO CUTE!!!!” with hearts doodled all around. FLINCH.

I’m remembering how my mom saved her old journals “for her daughter to read one day,” and she finally let me read them when I was in my teens, and I suffered through about half of one journal before handing them back. I really DIDN’T want to read about my mom pining for some boy, and reading MYSELF doing it is if anything EVEN WORSE. For years I regretted my impulsive decision to burn all the diaries of a 2-year high school relationship that ended badly, but now I’m GRATEFUL: those diaries are so much better in my imagination.

I did have a couple of good finds. One is a note from my high school physics teacher on an assignment:

Young Swistle,
You have convinced yourself that you are going to get these exercises wrong no matter how many silly mistakes you have to make. Why do you insist on making life hard for yourself?

I’m saving that. The other good find is lists of my favorite baby names from 1984, 1985, 1986, 1987, and 1988. I’m going to post those over at the baby names blog.

We all knew Rob would be doomed, DOOMED! FINE in the whole music lesson situation, and indeed he was. He came home from school and I pounced on him, practically grabbing him by the shoulders and shaking him as I said, “WELL??? What happened with the music lesson???” and he was all, “Huh? What? Oh, it was fine. Can I have goldfish crackers?”

He remembered the lesson, which was my primary concern: I couldn’t believe I’d forgotten to remind him as he got on the bus, and also I don’t know how I’m going to let him go off to college where he’s going to have to remember to get up, remember to shower, remember to go to class, remember to do his homework……. Well, anyway, let’s save that panic for another day.

He asked a teacher where the classroom was, and when she sent him to the music room rather than the band room (I didn’t know there was a different room, either) he asked another teacher, which I was very glad to hear because he and I share the Panic Gene, which means that we sometimes get so nervous and upset we are no longer able to think of any sensible ideas other than crying. He found the room, and he was the only one who didn’t have an instrument, plus he didn’t have the book, but he said he just explained to the teacher that his clarinet was on its way but hadn’t arrived yet, and she was fine with that—-and see again the part about Panic Gene, because in similar situations he’s been mute because he wasn’t sure it was okay to explain things to the teacher in case it was like he was arguing or talking back. (Me: *empathetic pang*)

Then he went to his classroom, and his teacher had NOT known he had a music lesson but she DID know music lessons started this week—so as he put it, she “believed” him, and also he gave her my note so now she also knows Rob has an anxious mother, and it’s just as well we get that out of the way while the year is young.

So. He handled it just fine and everything was just fine. I was glad he and I had gone over it ahead of time, with me explaining that sometimes _I_ felt panicky and had trouble thinking what to do and so it was good to think things out beforehand and realize that even if things went wrong they’d still be fine overall, because at the time he was vigorously nodding and saying he was the same way, even though afterward he was all cazh about it.

It is time for some photos of the new dining room! I wasn’t very good about making sure I was taking pictures from the same angle, or, like, at the same time of day, and in fact it wouldn’t be out of line if someone gently explained that I should make sure I was taking photos of the SAME ROOM each time—and also, it’s really hard to get a picture that shows much of it. But you’ll get the idea.

This is standing in the kitchen, looking past all the shoved-into-the-kitchen junk (the dining room chairs will soon have a more sensible home, but where ARE we going to put the recycling bins that used to be on the porch??) into the dining room before the walls were painted or the floor was in. The opening there used to be sliding glass doors onto the porch. Do you like our original early-1960s kitchen light fixture? It has mod gold stars on the bulb cover.

This is after I painted the ceiling white and the walls white Behr Sea Salt, but before the floor was in. Look at all the outlets my dad put in for us! That’s only half of them!

This is after the Armstrong fake wood laminate Black Walnut floor went in. Do you love it? I love it. We also installed one (1) baby.

Um, heh-LO! Did SOMEONE post a pay-it-forward contest and then just wander off and not choose a winner? Swistle, I am looking in your direction.

The winner is Erin of MO Mommy, which is practically COSMIC TIMING because she is feeling a little GRIM lately and has been inadvertently shoplifting and so forth, and so this seems like the time for a hot brownie injection. Except they will not be hot, they will be cold and beginning to get stale on the edges. And they will be surrounded by random Target finds, including a few cutie things I bought yesterday from the school supply clearance section, which does not sound very exciting I grant you but they’re VERY CUTE THINGS and I bought them for myself as well because they were so cute.

Also: I am getting a NIECE. No, not for the pay-it-forward package! I mean, that’s what the answer the pay-it-forward question ended up being. I guess now I will have to learn how to spell the word “niece” once and for all.

Okay! Now that I’ve handled that little matter, I need to have a big hand-wring: it’s Rob’s first day of clarinet lessons at school, and he doesn’t know where he’s supposed to go for the lesson (it’s first thing in the day, before he goes to his classroom), and although the music teacher is expecting that some children will not yet have their instruments, she said they should come with their music books. Which we remembered at breakfast time, and yet managed to send him on the bus without.

I am trying to suppress my empathetic panic, imagining him getting off the bus already worried about finding where he’s supposed to go, and then realizing he forgot the music book. And that’s if he remembers to worry about finding where he’s supposed to go: I was already half-panicked about him forgetting to go to the lesson instead of to class. Really, I am not sure this system is set up well for my mental health. What I need is a little tiny remote control I can use to steer him.

You know what? (and try to contain your surprise): five children eat A LOT. Today, for snack: one entire box of granola bars. And afterward, they were STILL HUNGRY. I am going to have to grow crops in the backyard. Also: when the kids are teenagers, their part-time jobs will be at restaurants, so that they can mayhap eat up the scraps, like hogs.

At a camp I went to twice as a child, we scraped our plate leavings into big buckets to feed the hogs. A very efficient system, especially considering what picky and inconsistent eaters children can be. I’ve thought of that many times when lunch has come back to the kitchen nearly uneaten, to be scraped into the trash because it’s not something that keeps. “Hogs,” I think to myself. “We need hogs.”

We do sort of have hogs, or a hog-like system anyway: It often happens that what one kid won’t eat, another kid will. If Rob doesn’t want his chunks of plum, Elizabeth does. And if Edward only wants the middles of his sandwich halves and not the edges—well, Henry is not so picky. And if Henry doesn’t want all his cheese cubes, Rob does. And so during the meal the leavings and rejects are redistributed until everything is eaten.

This toast is part of Jess‘s Surprise Bloggy Bridal Shower. Jess and her fiancé Torsten went to a surprise in-person shower today, and the plan is for them to come home and find many blog posts wishing them well in their upcoming marriage. I recommend getting a glass of something delicious and taking a sip after reading each one. Toasts are being posted throughout the evening, and so this list will continue to be updated.

(If you’ve done a toast, remember to email me the URL after it’s posted so I can add you to the list: swistle at gmail dot com.)

********

To Jess and Torsten, a toast!

May you be happy! May you agree on paint colors! May you agree how much time to spend watching television! May you agree how much snacking and desserting is appropriate! May you agree how much time you want to spend at the hotel and how much time you want to spend actively seeing the sights and how much time you want to spend in a cafe and how much time you want to spend shopping for souvenirs!

May you agree what is the right amount to spend for cable and what is ridiculous. May you agree how many pets to have, and of what species, and what is a good kind of name for a pet and what’s silly. May you agree on the order in which DVDs should be sorted, and at what point the household has too many DVDs and should thin them out a little. May you agree on how many pairs of shoes a person can reasonably have without being considered to have “a problem.”

May you agree on which of your parents’ traits are annoying. May you agree on the splitting of holidays between the families. May you agree what time of day Christmas should be celebrated, and what foods should be eaten, and in what manner the presents should be opened. May you agree how much is the right amount to spend on presents, and whether the mail carrier should get one.

May you find a good “couple friend,” where both of you like both other people without being attracted to either of them. May you find a car you both find comfortable and easy to drive. May you agree on which movie to watch at the theater. May you agree on the spelling of the word theater/theatre. May you agree whose turn it is to refill the ice cube tray.

May you have many beautiful babies. May you toast them on their wedding days. May your children have many beautiful babies, and may you toast them on their wedding days too.

To Jess and Torsten!

********
More toasts:

Earth to Bella
Not the Mother of the Year
Notthedaddy
Smart! by K. Rae
30 Dialogues
Big Dreams, Rainy City
Move Along – There’s Nothing to See Here
Hello, Self
Moo’s Moo
Spacebooke
Tea and Crumpets
Kristin’s Four Kids
Each of the Two
A Life of Whining
All D’s
All Dressed Up
Jonniker
Pseudostoops
Busty Satan
Eleanor’s Trousers
Living Yellow
When I Look to the Sky
Anonymous Her
Marie’s Blog Cafe
Midwest Mom
Turquoise Ribbons
Only Slightly Neurotic
Totally Serial
Kirida
Houndrat
Fat Sucks!
The Princess of Quite a Lot…
Leaf, probably…
…and hijinks ensued.
This? Is Not the Life I Ordered!
Emblita’s External Monologue
Scenic Overlook
Miss Glass is Half Full
Pickles and Dimes
MO Mommy
Mighty Maggie
Pessimistic Redhead
Incubation Nation
Sagebrush and Serendipity
Just a Bunch of Silliness, Really
How About It?

Yesterday I killed a fly by using a bib to whip it down out of the air. Then I flung open the window sash, leaned out, and yelled, “I killed one with one blow!” No one thought I meant a giant. (Hee. If you don’t read fairy tales, you’re going to think I’ve been dipping into the painkillers from my last c-section.)

Speaking of tripping: earlier this week, I was going down the steps of our house, and a couple of steps up from the bottom I tripped. I am an experienced tripper, and I could tell there was no saving this one by grabbing the railing—and anyway, my arms were full and my reflexes are not good enough to have time to fling away the things in my arms and then grab the railing. So what I did was, I pushed up as hard as I could with my non-tripping foot, and I JUMPED. And it WORKED: instead of falling, I landed solidly if jarringly on two feet. It was not quite the jaw-dropper of JB leaping the fence (last photo on that page), but for me it was astonishing. I don’t do Amazing Saves. I do Amazing Crashes.

Would you like to see a photo I’m titling “Chaos”?

This is me (except I am invisible) making a double batch of brownies with three helpers. Elizabeth is stirring, Edward is whipping his blankie around, and Henry has discovered a toy on a chair. The kitchen is already in chaos because things are moved around for the dining room work, and because the children have managed to rip the doors off TWO of our three freestanding cupboards, and it looks so messy to see all that stuff just hanging out. But the real clincher is the plastic JACKOLANTERN on top of the doorless freestanding cupboards. I mean, WTH? It’s obviously too early for it. It’s not there from….LAST YEAR……is it?

Oh, hey. Do you want to read YET ANOTHER post about finding balance? I don’t blame you. Do you want to instead talk about LOOT? OKAY!

I won Amy Quarry‘s contest (here’s her shop), and when the package arrived yesterday I would describe my reaction as “ZOMG.” I even thought maybe I shouldn’t show it to you, because deliberately taunting people is MEAN.

Also, my camera is on the fritz. I need to replace it, but have been lazy about that, especially since the camera sometimes works. Today it works but not if I use the flash, so I brought everything out to the new dining room where there’s good light. So you can see my painting stuff in the background, and also the boxes of flooring. Artistic!

First, take a look at this dress for Elizabeth. I GASPED. Those are EMBROIDERED DESIGNS

Then I just kept pulling out one thing after another. I’d pull out an awesome little container with a fabric lid, and INSIDE the container would be MORE THINGS. There’s a necklace with TWO different pendants. A flower keyring made of buttons. Two magnets made out of bottlecaps. Two of those things that pinch big stacks of paper, but with pretty fabric on them instead of the usual plain black plastic. A little zippered fabric pouch. A barrette. Two ponytail holders.

There was also this headband, which is not in the photo above because Elizabeth wouldn’t let me take it off of her. And this is a girl who says every morning as I’m combing her rat’s nest hair, “NO ponytails! NO barrettes!”

If you have Facebook, you can join Amy Quarry’s fan page and be automatically entered for a monthly drawing of a surprise package. This month she’s doing a handbag. Do you remember the handbag she did for the Guess Swistle contests? DROOL.

This was not TECHNICALLY a pay-it-forward contest, but I’m turning it into one because I’ve been moody and crabby and it seems like a pay-it-forward contest is a cheering thing. But! You should not expect anything as good as the package I got from Amy, because GEEZ! I mean, honestly. I am only human, and I am not an artist. The package I put together will be more along the lines of “Things I find at Target while thinking of you,” and will probably include brownies and/or fudge. And then if you win, you’ll throw a contest yourself, and the prize for YOUR contest needn’t be so astonishing, either. A typical pay-it-forward prize is significantly smaller: some brownies and some trinkets, say, or a paperback and some candy.

Leave a comment on this post, ANY comment but if you freeze up in that kind of situation why don’t you tell me if I will be getting a NIECE or a NEPHEW in February? Contest will close on Sunday, September 21st, at noon U.S. Pacific time.

It was so nice to have all that helpful feedback on the difficult musical instrument choice! I barely know the difference between a trumpet and a trombone (I have to say to myself, “slide ____” and see which word leaps into the gap; then I can picture the trombone, and know it isn’t the trumpet), so practically all the information was new to me.

I answered some frequently-asked questions in the comment section, but then the comment section got kind of large and so here they are:

Q: What exactly makes reeds “disgusting”?
A: My mom, back when she played the clarinet, thought it was pretty gross to have to suck on the reed until it was saturated with spit, then screw it onto the mouthpiece and put the spit-soaked reed back in her mouth. But many of you didn’t find this gross, and a few of you couldn’t imagine what could possibly be gross about it, and I think that’s a very good sign for reed instruments.

Q: Instruments with spit valves are way more disgusting than reeds! Way more!
A: Okay! I believe you! My mom didn’t play any spit-valve instruments, so the “reeds are icky” opinion was stand-alone, not relative. I’m going on what I’ve got, here.

Q: You said no to drums because of the noise! You are wrong! They are actually the quietest! All instruments are loud! Let him play drums! THIS FACTORY UNFAIR TO DRUMS!!
A: I think there was more feedback on this than on anything else, even though I didn’t say anything about drums being loud, or about why I was rejecting them. The actual reasons I rejected them were: (1) Rob has near-zero interest in playing them, and (2) I think one of the most enriching parts of learning a musical instrument is learning to read music. I asked him again about it, though, after reading all the appealing comments about what an easy/small/quiet instrument they can be to practice on, but he still says he’s not interested.

Q: Flutes are for sissies. –Anonymous
A: Since I’d just said that my brother played flute for many years, this was kind of…tactless, yes? I do see the concern with “girl instruments” vs. “boy instruments” but I don’t really LIKE it. If someone says very delicately that in their school the flutes were mostly played by girls, I hear the message loud and clear and am inclined to take it into consideration as a valuable point: I may think such divisions are ridiculous, but that doesn’t mean I want to sacrifice my child on the alter of social change. When someone says “Flutes are for sissies,” that makes me feel as if prejudices and gender stereotypes are ugly and stupid, and that the ridiculous ones should be beaten to pulps. By boys brandishing flutes, perhaps.

Q: Why not have him play [other instrument not on list]?
A: The seven instruments I listed are the only ones offered in the school program.

After several days of discussions, the decision is that he’s going to take clarinet. He ranked it at the top of his list by a wide margin, and we thought his reasons for choosing it were good: he said he liked the sound of it best, and that he preferred the kind of instrument with a lot of keys where a certain combination of keys meant a certain note, rather than a “sliding” way of finding the notes (as with the trombone and with string instruments).

This is so strange for me! I tried piano and recorder in elementary school and experienced Epic Fail with both (no interest + no talent), and so I don’t even know about practicing, or how to read music, or how to take the instrument apart and clean it, or how to suck on a reed. You can bet I’ll be asking desperate questions in the future of all you ex band members.

Hey. I have a question. For those of you who during pregnancy got the 16-week AFP screen (or the Triple Screen, or the Quad Screen, or the MSAFP) (it’s the one where they draw blood and then tell you your personal odds for a baby with Down Syndrome, spina bifida, and a couple of other things), would you please comment if you got a Scary Result and then things turned out Perfectly Fine? My sister-in-law got a Scary Result, and even though we can all see statistically that things are likely to be Perfectly Fine, it would be bolstering to hear a lot of stories along the lines of, “OMG, I got a Scary Result and I worried for my ENTIRE pregnancy, and then the baby was TOTALLY FINE!”

********
Pay-it-forward updates:

Happy Dash is starting a new contest with a fun twist: she’s passing on one item from the package she received, and when you receive HER package you have to pass on one item from it with the package YOU send.

This Wonderful, Crazy Life is starting a new contest.

Scenic Overlook is showing the giftie she got.

Thank You For Not Being Perky is showing the giftie she got and starting a new contest.

Yesterday at school, the zipper of Rob’s soft lunch box got stuck. So one of the cafeteria staff SLICED THE LUNCH BOX OPEN WITH A KNIFE.

Does that seem a little…extreme? Instead of treating this as an emergency surgery situation where the clothes are cut right off the patient, why not treat it as a Forgotten Lunch situation? Call the parent or have the child buy hot lunch or do whatever is ordinarily done when a child forgets a lunch box. Because I got that zipper unstuck with less than 5 seconds of wiggling, and so I’m pretty cheesed to have the lunch box completely destroyed.

Well. Anyway. Rob is in fourth grade, and in his school that’s the year they get offered musical instrument lessons. They take them at school, so I don’t have to do anything except provide the instrument and books, make sure he brings them to school on the right day, and nag him to practice. Well, and LISTEN to him practice. Perhaps that should be Item Number One.

Paul and I have decided to let him do it, and “let” is the verb we’re using, too. Furthermore, we’re not going to rent the instrument, we’re going to buy it. Renting makes me nervous, and if we buy, we can reuse the same instrument for each child who gets all excited about band but then drops out after a year.

And so the question is, “Which instrument?” There is a list of seven instruments offered, and I’ve marked the four Rob says he’s interested in:

1. Flute. After listening to my brother practice WITH DEDICATION for years and years and YEARS, I’m not sure I can bear to hear ONE MORE NOTE from a flute. And it didn’t make Rob’s list.

2. Clarinet. This is Rob’s first choice, but his experience is limited to a short instrument demonstration given at school. My mother played the clarinet, and says that by the time she was done with it she never wanted to hear a clarinet again—and she’s a musically talented person. Also, she says the reeds are disgusting and keep breaking. My dad says he thinks the reeds are synthetic now (and therefore less disgusting/breakable) for student use. Another issue: Rob has an overbite, and my mom thinks the clarinet could make it worse, since the clarinet pushes firmly against the inside of the front top teeth.

3. Alto saxophone. This has some appeal, but it’s a more expensive instrument, and it’s fourth on Rob’s list. My mom says this one has the disgusting reeds problem too, though my dad again counters with the synthetic thing. My mom further declares that the sound of a child practicing on a saxophone “defies description.” Then she describes it anyway: “absolutely nightmarish.”

4. Trumpet. The dentist recommended it for overbites. It’s second on Rob’s list. But my mom points out that the trumpet is a LOUD instrument, and that we should take into account whether we want to subject the neighbors to a 30-minute daily practice session.

5. Trombone. Also recommended for overbites. Third on Rob’s list. Loudness/neighbors issues.

6. Baritone. No. It’s too large and it’s too expensive.

7. Drums. No.